1695, Spanish attack

Cayo Casina was renamed to St. George’s Caye either on April 10, 1765 or May 15, 1766. It was the logcutter’s primary settlement until the early 1780’s.

On 5 August 1779, the governor of Yucatan was ordered to “eject the English from the Mosquito Coast”. The governor, perhaps perceiving discretion as the better part of valour, did not proceed to the dreaded Mosquito Shore but instead attacked St George’s Cay on September 15. The inhabitants of St George’s Cay were taken by surprise and the Spaniards completely destroyed the place, taking about 450 prisoners. The people first became aware of the Spanish presence on the island at about six thirty in the morning. It was then that they also became aware for the first time of the war between Britain and Spain. The commandant of Bacalar supervised the operation with a fleet numbering about nineteen ships. The captured British settlers – men, women and children – were treated badly. About 140 of them, plus about 250 slaves, were fettered and confined in the holds of the Spanish vessels. They were first taken to Bacalar and from there marched overland about 345 miles to Mérida, some dying on the way from exhaustion and hunger. A few of the men managed to escape on the overland journey; some of them went to their usual place of safety, the Mosquito Shore, and others to Roatan. From Mérida the prisoners were sent first to Campeche and then to Havana, where they remained in dungeons until their release in the spring of 1782. Thus, despite the fact that St George’s Cay was retaken almost immediately by His Majesty’s schooner Racehorse, the greater part of the British settlement in the Bay of Honduras was more or less abandoned for about five years, because most of the returning settlers did not reach the Bay until 1784 and later.